AN Opposition People’s National Party (PNP) councillor on Tuesday urged his colleagues in the Kingston and St Andrew Municipal Corporation (KSAMC) to support strong measures being implemented against crime.

“It is a matter of life and death, and it affects all of us. We need to take a strong stand against crime,” Councillor Neville Wright (Trench Town Division) said at the final meeting of the KSAMC council for 2022.

While Jamaica Constabulary Force data seen by the Jamaica Observer do not break down crime in specific political constituencies and divisions, they show that so far this year a total 0f 71 murders have been committed in the Kingston Western Police Division. For the entire year in 2021 the number was 106.

On October 20 this year a police corporal from the Kingston Western Division was one of two men killed by a gunman in Trench Town.

On Tuesday, Wright, who is also a pastor, informed the meeting that he will not be a candidate in the next local government elections due by February 2023.

Councillor Norman Perry (PNP, Duhaney Park Division) also told the council that he would not be seeking re-election in the upcoming poll. He thanked Mayor Delroy Williams and the corporation’s CEO Robert Hill for the help and interest that the council had given the New Haven community in his division.

Meanwhile, Councillor Lee Clarke (Jamaica Labour Party, White Hall Division), who also chairs the Building and Town Planning Committee, urged the PNP councillors to return to the committee from which they had resigned in January.

In response, Councillor Andrew Swaby (PNP, Vineyard Town Division), the minority leader, said that they would consider Clarke’s appeal.

In January the PNP councillors resigned from the committee due to what they said was a “lack of integrity, transparency and efficacy with which the current Administration is operating”.